Scott Brown's sermon, 'What Love Looks Like, Part 2,' explores the teachings of 1 Corinthians 13, focusing on the transformative power of God's love within the church. The sermon highlights the challenges faced by the Corinthian church, such as division, immorality, and selfishness, and how God's ordained experiences reveal their lack of love. Brown emphasizes that these experiences serve as tests of faith and sanctification, encouraging believers to examine their love, personalize the teachings by replacing 'love' with their own name, and soak in God's love. The sermon underscores the importance of not seeking one's own interests, being slow to anger, and not keeping records of wrongs, illustrating these concepts with examples from biblical figures like Timothy and Apostle Paul. The sermon concludes by asserting that only through the Holy Spirit and the gospel of Jesus Christ can believers truly manifest the love described in 1 Corinthians 13.

So, in 1 Corinthians 13, we see God's love for a reforming church. That church was the Corinthian church. It was a divided church. It was a church that was experiencing lots of troubles from selfishness. There was a man who was being sued by another brother.

There was immorality being tolerated in the church. There were various expressions of selfishness in that church, but God was reforming a church in order that he would teach them how to love. And they were feeling the sting of lingering worldliness, and it was expressing itself in different ways. And the Apostle Paul is dealing with these various matters one by one in the Corinthian letter. When you read the Corinthian letter, you see Paul, he deals with one issue, then another issue, and another issue, and another issue, and now he's dealing with this whole matter of love.

And what the Corinthians were experiencing is what you and I have always experienced and will always experience in the Church of Jesus Christ. And it's this, and here's what we cannot miss while we're in 1 Corinthians 13. And that is that God ordains various experiences in our lives to teach us how to love. He has ordained them, and they reveal our lack of love. That's the problem.

They are actual tests of faith, and they test in either one of two ways. They are tests of faith that prove that you don't really have faith, because he who doesn't love his brother is a liar. So these tests can actually come to the church in order to test it to see if various people are actually in the faith. And the test of faith is the test of their love. But there's another kind of test as well, and it's a test of sanctification, because Lack of love is revealed by the experiences of life that come upon us.

Remember, God ordains various experiences in life in order to test our love and teach us how to love. I was struck by the words of this song that we just sang a few minutes ago, the line, let sorrow do its work. Because God uses sorrow to do a work. He uses wrongs being done to you. Like the man in Corinth, he was being sued.

His love was being tested. And the apostle Paul says to him, why not rather be wronged? His love was being tested. God brought a lawsuit against him so that God would glorify his love, so that God would demonstrate the love that Jesus Christ had toward undeserving sinners. And this kind of thing happens to us in the Church of Jesus Christ.

And you might think of various ways that you've been wronged. Maybe even by specific people that you can think about right now in this church. Wrong things that were said, wrong things that were done. Why is that? Why did you lose?

Why were you hurt? Maybe you were attacked, maybe you were ignored, but why? Because God is always glorifying himself and he distinctively glorifies himself when love is tested. And that's why we're in 1 Corinthians 13, And Paul is showing them a more excellent way. You can see the outline that's in front of you here, the whole outline of chapter 13 of which we are finishing the second part, and that is the signs of love here.

We've already gone through six signs of love that describe what love looks like. And these signs really describe what a Christian looks like. And there are these 15 marks of love that really display not only the love of Jesus Christ that is received by sinners, but also the love that sinners display reciprocally to other sinners who have sinned against them. Because you have this cascading waterfall of love from God the Father. God loves the Son.

The Son loves sinners. He saves them. He pours out His grace. And then sinners love other sinners, and they love one another. That's the work of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we see that worked out in the church.

And so, as I said last week, and I just want to remind us again, this study in 1 Corinthians 13 is really just a parenthesis from our study in 1 John. It's a study in three great doctrines that are being presented in 1 John. The first is the doctrine of regeneration. If anyone says he loves God and hates his brother, he's a liar. You need to know if you're regenerate and secondly the doctrine of sanctification You know has God been sending you has been God been sending you arrows has he been sending you offenders To teach you how to love and you're being sanctified by it so there's a challenge to continue to grow in love.

And then finally there's this declaration of the gospel. You know, what is the gospel? It's God reaching down to love sinners and bring them into his family. Now I'd like to give you some ways to apply this, some sort of interpretive grids, if you will. How should you think about this?

How should you personally be thinking about this? And I'd like to give you three things that I want to encourage you to do with every single one of these marks of love. You can do it in your own mind as you're hearing us move from one to another. But the first thing you ought to do is examine. You should see if you're a true son or daughter of God.

Secondly, you should personalize. You should personalize each one of these. Like you should be reading this, you should replace the word love with your own name. For example, David suffers long. Tommy is kind.

Tim does not envy. Ash does not parade himself. Mike is not puffed up. Scott does not behave rudely. In other words, personalize it.

And ask yourself, is this me? Are there ways that I have sinned against people particularly? Because these are written not just to a church generally, they are written to individuals that exist within churches. So you should personalize and possibly you might need to repent. You might rejoice in the way that people have treated you with love.

And then the third, after personalizing it, I would just encourage you to soak. Soak in the love of God, because every one of these is a description of the way that God loves sinners. Rejoice in God's love. Grow your understanding of God's love. See how all the different ways that he has loved you through his patience, through his kindness, through his gentleness toward you.

How his son humbled himself and came and stood beside you and drew you with cords of love. So these three things to first examine to see if you're in the faith, to personalize it and possibly repent, and then soak into the love of God. It's so important, I think, when we study 1 Corinthians 13, that we don't finally end up in just moralizing it. That each one of these relates to Jesus Christ's love, because if you're leaning on your morality, you've lost the meaning of it. All of these point to Jesus Christ and the greatness of His love, the perfection of His love, and you can't look at the love of Jesus Christ without looking at yourself and saying, oh no, how short do I fall?

But don't let that lapse you into moralism to think that somehow if you just fix up these little things that somehow you'll be acceptable to God and man. That's ludicrous because God's love is so massive. It's so great. So we've covered the first six marks of love and now we're in number seven. Love does not seek its own.

So let's take these one by one. The Corinthian church was experiencing selfishness. Their selfishness was being exposed when being wronged, taking one another to court. They were selfish. Actually in the very meetings of the church as well, in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says, he who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.

And then people were just using their gifts to puff themselves up, to make themselves feel good, to build themselves up. And it was the opposite of a spirit of love that is described here of not seeking its own. This is the opposite of self-centeredness and self-absorption. Now, This is an astonishing disclosure here in this matter of not seeking its own. What is the most fundamental impulse of the human heart?

What is it? Self-love. Self-centeredness. That is the most fundamental principle that you can count on operating in your life, and God says that love is not like that. So you have this reality, this power of God in the new birth, where God establishes a new impulse.

He addresses this bent of your flesh that is impossible to overwhelm by the flesh. He's really speaking of the power of the new birth and how it dislodges selfishness by degrees in your life. And a true Christian is becoming less and less selfish as he lives. I was struck by the words of the Bible commentator, Linsky. He said, when you cure selfishness, you've just replanted the Garden of Eden.

And boy, isn't that true. Isn't that true in your family? Isn't that true in your church? Isn't that true in your workplace? How about that?

How about dislodging self-centeredness in the workplace? Wouldn't that be a nice idea? He's addressing this way that we trample over others because we're seeking our own. He confronts this impulse in us, you know, think of Jeremiah, chapter 45 verse 5, where Jeremiah says, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them.

And it's better, it's better to give than to get. Love does not insist on its own way. I think this means a number of things. One is that love isn't really all that much of a two-way street. Love doesn't insist on its own way.

You think about the various manifestations of insensitivity in your life to others, your blindness to the needs of others. The Apostle Paul goes right to the heart of the married relationship where he says that husbands should love their wives as themselves. He's assuming that a husband loves himself quite a bit. And he wants his wife to be loved quite a bit. And so the apostle Paul says, you husbands, you love yourselves quite a bit, so you need to be loving your wives quite a bit as well.

And it's just this assumption about our human nature. You find the example of Christ addressing this. Christ loved the church and he gave himself up for her. Romans 15.3 says Christ did not please Himself. In Luke chapter 22 verse 27, Jesus said, I am among you as the one who serves.

The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. This love comes from Jesus Christ. He isn't just an example of it. He is that. But He is the actual spiritual source and force of its applicability in life.

It's His Spirit that allows it to happen, and it really can only happen by His Spirit. I don't know how profitable it is to say, I just need to be less selfish. I just don't know how helpful that is. What is helpful though is to be filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ who gave Himself up to become, to actually become like Him and to be a demonstration of His glory. You see this in the example of the Apostle Paul.

He had the love of Jesus Christ in him. In 1 Corinthians 9, 19, he said, I have made myself a servant of all. In 2 Corinthians 12, 14, and 15 he said, I will most gladly spend and be spent for your sakes. This was the love of Jesus Christ living in the Apostle Paul. It was the power of the gospel as a result of his being filled with the Holy Spirit.

You see this in various personalities all throughout the Bible. One of the most compelling and beautiful examples in the New Testament church was Timothy himself. In Philippians chapter 2 verses 19 and 20 we learned that Timothy did not seek his own. Paul wanted to send somebody to the Philippian church but he just couldn't send anybody that he knew. And so he says that he is going to send Timothy so that he can encourage them.

He says, I have no one like-minded who will sincerely care for your state, for all seek their own, not the things which are of Jesus Christ. For you know his proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel." So Timothy was a person who didn't care about himself. Why? It wasn't just some human capability. It was a power of the Holy Spirit working in him.

So the answer to the problem is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To be filled with the love of Jesus Christ. So we should be considering in our church and in our families, am I seeking my own in any one of these places? Because love does not seek its own. So what do you do?

Three things. Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith. Secondly, personalize it and repent if necessary. And thirdly, soak in the love of God. Think of how God has been so kind to you.

He has preferred you in so many ways by sending his son. He's letting his, he lets his son shine on the evil and the good and the rain falls on the just and on the unjust. Think of how kind God has been in that way. And then he says love is not provoked. And to be provoked is to respond to an actual provocable provocation.

In other words, love is tested when you're provoked. Has anybody been provoked? Like in the last week? Has anyone provoked you? Okay, okay, the last month.

Okay, okay, so I know. But how about the last 60 days? Well, you know, have you had an opportunity to demonstrate the love of Jesus Christ when you were provoked? Because you will be provoked in this world. I guarantee you, you will.

And you experience things that stimulate a rising emotion to kindle, to instigate, to goad, to annoy, to irritate, to infuriate, to exasperate, to ruffle your feathers. He's talking about this happening to you. You are a Christian. You are in a church. Maybe you are in the Hopian church, not the Corinthian church, but somebody provoked you in the Hopian church.

So what are you going to do? Well, we know what you want to do. We know what the impulse is. But love doesn't operate in this kind of upheaval where you fight back. And, you know, people have different flashpoints.

Some people's flashpoints are almost unseen. Like they may be incredibly provoked but you can't see it. They know how to put on a game face. Some people, you just, it shows up everywhere. I mean you can't miss it, you know.

But people are made differently but here's the reality. Don't be faked out by the outward appearances. The outward appearances do reflect what's going on in the heart, for sure. I think we should say that for sure. But don't be too faked out by outward appearances.

Because the provocation is something that happens in the heart. In fact, the only other time this word is used in the New Testament is when Paul came into Athens. And he went into Athens and Luke says that his spirit was provoked within him because of all the idolatry. He was turned upside down in his soul because of all the idolatry that he saw there. He was provoked on the inside.

And so he's addressing this way of love. You know, if you're easily provoked, you just have to recognize what it points to something. And you know, the Proverbs speaks of a cool spirit, Proverbs 17, 27, He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a Fool is counted wise when he holds his peace. When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive.

Sometimes when provoked, you just need to shut your mouth and collect yourself and let the Spirit of God catch up with your spirit and overwhelm it to take over in a way. Proverbs 16 32 says, he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. So he's speaking about this matter being provoked. It speaks of friendships because Solomon said, make no friendship with an angry man. It addresses the use of the tongue, as James said in James 1, 19, let every person be slow to speak and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

It speaks to strife. A wrathful man stirs up strife, Proverbs 15, 18, but he who is slow to anger allays contention. It speaks of quarrels in Proverbs 20, verse three. It is honorable for a man to stop striving since any fool can start a quarrel. It speaks to impulsiveness in Proverbs 1430, he who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly.

It speaks to fathers, fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord it speaks to elders because in Titus 1 7 we learned that elders must not be quick tempered in other words not not easily provoked words not easily provoked. It speaks to experiencing sins in others, Proverbs 10-12, hatred stirs up strife but love covers all sins. It speaks to anger in Proverbs 19 11. The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger and his glory is to overlook a transgression. Anybody experience a transgression lately?

Any transgressions you just ought to overlook in your life? You've been looking at them, you've been staring at them, overlook. It speaks to self-control. Proverbs 16, 32, he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. It speaks to a person's disposition, Ecclesiastes 7 verse 8, the patient in spirit is better than a proud spirit.

Now is anger, is a visceral response always sinful? No. Is anger always sinful? No. The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God, but we are instructed, be angry but do not sin.

And so I don't want to spend a lot of time making this secondary qualification, but we all understand what we're talking about here in being provoked. I won't develop the counterpoint of when you ought to be angry because we all know that there is a place for righteous anger. But that's not what he's talking about here. You know, when you're first saved, you usually have a lower flashpoint, but as you grow, it grows. So these three elements, examine, personalize, and soak.

Think of How many opportunities have we given God to be provoked? To wrath. And yet he took his wrath and he laid it upon his son. And then love thinks no evil. Now there are two words in this one here, thinks no evil, thinks and evil and you have to understand what he is speaking of.

He's not talking about putting your head in the sand and acting like nothing is wrong. It's not an illustration of the three monkeys, you know, see no evil, think no evil, hear no evil. He's not talking about that. And the words really reveal it. The word thinks is a term that reflects bookkeeping.

It reflects the keeping of a ledger. In other words, you're itemizing wrongs, you're itemizing evils. That's the whole idea. And you keep a ledger so that you don't forget. Now that's good for bookkeeping, but it's not good for relationship keeping.

It's good for business, It's bad news in relationships and in the church and in the family. So the first word is a bookkeeping word, thinks. It has to do with record keeping and holding on to records. And the second word is evil, and it's a word that really implies harm, harm that has been done. So he's talking about love keeps no record of harm done.

This word was also used translated in an occasion when the Apostle Paul was on an island, and in Acts chapter 28, a snake comes out of the wood pile and bites him. And The phrase that we read in Acts 28-5 is, but he shook the snake off into the fire without being harmed. Now, it's that word harmed that's translated evil. So I think that love doesn't keep a record of harms that are done. And he's really talking about how you keep love alive because you're going to get harmed in relationships and how you grow love rather than destroy it.

And the truth is love is forgetful. You know, If you've thought poorly of yourself because you forget things, you should praise God that you had the capacity to forget that harm's done. In some ways, it's good to have a poor memory. You just can't remember the details. Sometimes you're left with a feeling and you can't remember the details and so your minds will just get rid of the feeling because you can't remember it.

But when you have a list of harms done, then you should examine yourself. Proverbs 17, 9 says, whoever covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends. Now, people are famous for making lists of other sins. If you're a pastor, you know how true that is. Especially when you're sitting in a counseling appointment, you might be with a husband and a wife, and it's just proverbial that people bring their lists about how they've been offended and they keep records.

Some of them are mental, some of them are physical records. And whether it's physical or it's mental and you just keep repeating it in your mind over and over again and you keep replaying all those wrongs that that person did to you, That's exactly what he's talking about. But love is forgetful. And if you have a list like that, here's my pastoral advice. Burn the list.

God in His kindness has actually done the very same thing with us. But this whole matter of nursing wounds and meditating on wrongs suffered, being lost in our disappointments, the losses, the deprivations that we've experienced, the attacks, the ways that people have done things that did us wrong. That's exactly what he's talking about here. And we could go to the parable of the forgiving servant where no account was kept for his wrongs, but he could not forgive the slightest account. In Romans 4-8, Paul speaks of how blessed it is to be in this kind of state before God.

He said, blessed or happy is the man who sinned, the Lord will not take into account. In 2 Corinthians 5 19, we read about this whole matter of accounting is what Jesus was all about in his sacrifice. God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not counting, not counting, not counting, not counting their trespasses against them. You know, If you look at the language of forgiveness, it's full of this concept of not counting. In Jeremiah 31, there's this idea of how God forgets.

God forgets your sins. In 1 Peter 4, 8, that love covers a multitude of sins. There's this language, to forget, to cover, to forgive, to throw, to throw to the bottom of the sea, or to die, to take a scarlet garment and turn it as white as wool, to remove it as far as the east is from the west, to blot it out as you read in Acts 3.19, to cancel it like in Colossians 2, or nail it to the cross like in Colossians 2.14, or to wipe it out like in Colossians 2.14. There's all this language that's very consistent with this idea of not keeping an account, to stop counting. And how many of us need to stop counting?

Apostle Paul said a real similar thing to the Ephesian Church. He said, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you. And then he said, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. How do you go forward? How do you go forward?

Cancel, forget, throw it as far as the east is from the west, put it in the bottom of the ocean, forget it. A lot of times the best thing you can do in your relationship with somebody is to forget. You know there's this idea in the Christian community that everybody has to be so accountable. Well this really argues for a different kind of accountability and again I don't want to have this principle die at the expense of 10, 000 qualifications because we know the difference between really dealing with sin with one another and forgetting. Love is very generous in its forgetfulness, " said one of the commentators that I read.

If you had a journal of the wrongs that you've done to God, what would it look like? Do you have a journal of wrongs that other people have done to you? You know, maybe your journals are full of wrongs that people have done. Do you want your sins to be in God's journal? So examine, personalize, and soak in the love of God.

The tenth does not rejoice in iniquity. Now, there are various ways that this has been interpreted, and I'm going to give you three ways that I think that you can interpret it. The first is love doesn't rejoice in evil in this world. Love doesn't celebrate evil celebrities. Love doesn't celebrate in the songs of adultery and the movies of adultery it doesn't celebrate the things that should not be celebrated it doesn't celebrate with and for evil it doesn't participate in it it turns away from it Christians hate sin because it offends God and it hurts people.

Sin caused the Lord Jesus Christ to be crucified. And love without hatred for sin is not love at all. Love does not rejoice in evil. Love does not love what is evil. It's not loving to be happy with people who are sinning and to act like it's such a happy thing.

That's not loving. Second, love doesn't rejoice when evil befalls another person. That's another way that it's been interpreted. It's a situation where you're sort of glad something bad has happened to someone who has offended you. They did you wrong and now you want wrong to be done to them.

And you are a little bit gratified when you hear that they stumbled or something terrible happened to them. And you know rejoicing in your brother's downfall is very dangerous. When you get some time, read Job 31, 29, read 1 Samuel 24, 17, where you find this exposing the sinfulness of gloating over the troubles that other people have, rejoicing when your enemy is harmed. You know, to find pleasure in someone else's disgrace is, as Charles Simeon said, it's the very essence of malice. It is the counterpart of the devil himself.

And then the third way to understand this is that love does not assume evil in a person. It's not suspicious. It's not overly ready to see the sin. It doesn't assume the sin. It doesn't assume the worst.

It doesn't think evil. It doesn't go around just looking for the evil in people and then nailing them for it or hating them for it or cataloging it or assuming it's worse than it is. He could be speaking of that as well. You know, gossip is one of the ways that people rejoice in evil. You can rejoice in evil with your tongue.

We love those dainty morsels and sometimes we ask questions to hear what was said privately to find fault with it and then we find pleasure in going and repeating that tale and we become tale bearers carrying the stories of the sins and the downfalls of others and we justify ourselves saying that we're just you know telling all to protect others but it's just nothing but rejoicing and iniquity. And God calls believers to hate that kind of evil and not to rejoice in unrighteousness. And then the eleventh, when you get to the eleventh, you get to sort of a different category. After just speaking of eight things that love is not, now at the very end the apostle turns to what love is. He begins with love rejoices in the truth, so now we have a positive mark of love and the Apostle Paul demonstrates this even with the Corinthian church that was experiencing so many troubles.

Paul actually rejoiced in the good that he saw in the Corinthians, like in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 4, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you by Jesus Christ, that you were enriched in everything by him in all utterance and knowledge. He's rejoicing in the truth. He's not rejoicing in all the sins of that church, but he's rejoicing that Jesus Christ began a good work in them, that he broke the power of sin and he is sanctifying them. This is a church that is reforming and he does this in various places. In 1 Corinthians 11, He does the same thing.

Love rejoices in the truth. This protects us from the false notion that all you need to do is love people and truth doesn't matter. Truth does matter. And John has said it in 2 John 6, this is love that we walk according to his commandments. Love and truth are not separable at all.

You can't rejoice in falsehood and be loving at the same time. And so this is a power of the new birth. It gives a certain kind of victory. It gives the Spirit the ability to rejoice in what is true. Now before you were a Christian, you didn't rejoice in what was true.

It was very threatening. It was very condemning. You didn't rejoice in it. You just kind of shook your head and went the other way. But when God changes your heart, you begin to rejoice in what is true, and you gravitate toward it.

And this speaks to The whole matter of how a true Christian experiences a sensitivity to holiness and he rejoices in the holiness, he loves it. Loving what God hates is not love. Love loves what God loves. And so it brings us to this matter that you can't separate truth and love. Both love and truth originate from God, and there's no way that they're contradictory.

But love loves what is true. Love hates what is not true. David declared this in a number of places. In Psalm 119 verse 104, he said, I hate every false way. Now David says that over and over again in the Psalms.

He says he hates those who fall away. He hates everything that's evil. It's right to love righteousness and it's right to hate lawlessness. And that's the whole idea that he's bringing about here. And then the next is love bears all things.

Now to bear is to cover, it's to tact. Children tend to tattle, That's not bearing all things. John MacArthur said there's a perverse pleasure in exposing someone's faults and failures. And That's the opposite of bearing all things. It has to do with bearing up under weights.

Love bears up under a disappointment. Love bears up when someone sues you. Love bears up when someone deceives you. Love bears up when someone slanders you. Love bears up when someone attacks you.

You bear, you bear, love, The love of God gives you sort of a bearing capability. I marvel at some of these weight lifters and the amount of weight their frame can bear. It's astonishing. Weights that some men can bear would just put me to the ground in a second and would put me in the hospital. But in their gigantic frame and structure of their bones and the way that their muscles are constructed, They're able to bear up, you know with gigantic weight and That's what he's talking about here.

It's to bear up under it's to be a heavy heavy weight lifter You know, I know there are a couple of heavy weight lifters in the room right now. You know what I'm talking about I don't know what I'm talking about, but you know But there's something there's something about your muscular structure and your bone structure that allows it to happen and the way that you balance. But this is what happens to a Christian. It makes them able to bear more than ever before. They're not undone.

They don't buckle under the stress. They don't get overwhelmed. Some people say, I'm just feeling overwhelmed. Is it possible that you're using the wrong word? You're not growing in love.

That's the problem. You've got a love problem, not an overwhelmed problem. Well, the love problem is creating the overwhelmed problem. And maybe, You know, what happens, God sends us various things to strengthen us, to strengthen the weak knees. This is what the discipline of the Lord does in Hebrews chapter 12, that the discipline of the Lord makes you stronger, and God sends you various disciplines.

He might send you a lawsuit, he might send you an attack, he might send you a thief, he might send you something. But he's doing it all to strengthen you. But if you're always denying it and sinning in those times, you won't be strong. God's bringing those things to you to make you strong. You might say, I don't like the way my wife talks to me.

God's trying to make you strong. You might say, I don't really like the way my boss manages me. God's trying to make you strong. I don't like the way he yells at me. God's making you strong.

He's making you able to bear up under the weight so that you can carry more of it, like a weight lifter can carry more weight in his body than the average bear. Love bears all things. You know, love bears all things. It covers a multitude of sins and therefore it's able to bear it. And then the 13th element, love believes all things.

Now he's not saying you can just believe everything you hear. That's ridiculous. He's talking about a mindset. It's a mindset that is not cynical. It's not suspicious.

By the way, these things are written in hyperbole these last four They are sort of over statements to help you understand the heart of a matter and so you don't want to over interpret it But he's talking about the person that is not cynical Love believes the things that are true. Love believes the things that the Bible says. You believe and you receive His grace. But there's a way of love that gives the benefit of the doubt and it believes. It's not suspicious.

This is not the same thing of being naive. This is love that is not suspicious of one another. And then hope's all things. And now love anticipates a good future. It hopes.

Love creates a hopeful outlook. The whole Corinthian letter is a demonstration of it because he praises the Corinthians and he carries them on to a hopeful outlook. He carries them into a better world. He deals with these various things and says, okay, you see what's happening here? There's hope.

You see what's happening here? There's hope. He's really casting a vision of hope all throughout the letter. Things can be better. And this is what hope does.

It does see its sin, but it doesn't lose touch with the hope. His admonitions bear witness to the hope. I like how Thomas Watson talked about how we can fall into hopelessness. He says, despair looks on things with black spectacles and gives all up as lost. How often does that happen?

You think, I'll never trust anybody again. I'm never going to trust that guy again. In fact, I've had a couple of people come to me and say, do you think you can ever trust people again? I said, absolutely I can. I can.

God's totally in control. He's in control of everything that happens. So yeah, you can trust again. If he wasn't in control, then you shouldn't have much hope. But if you believe he's in control, then don't worry about the next thing.

One disappointment doesn't cast into the future because of hope. He said, hope is like the cork. This is Thomas Watson again. Hope is like the cork to the net which keeps the heart from sinking. I don't know if anybody walked in here needing some hope.

He's saying that love, love hopes all things. Jeremiah, in the book of Lamentations of all places said, it's good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. Can you do that? Can you hope and wait for the salvation of God? But hope doesn't despair.

Hope is like coal to a steam engine. It keeps you going. It shapes your emotions. Hope shows on your face. It enlivens your work.

It destroys obstacles. Psalm 71, David says, for you are my hope, O Lord. You are my trust from my youth. Now there's nothing better in youth than to hope. You know I think hope gets challenged in youth pretty significantly but when you hope in your youth it just is such a blessing.

There's nothing better than to have a hopeful youth and to live your whole youth in hope. What a blessing. But you know, youth fears the future a lot of times more than old age does, because old age can look back and say, yep, God works, he is good. But youth doesn't have as much of a track record, but youth just needs to believe it. And they'll see it.

They'll see it in time. That there's reason for hope, absolutely. God does take care of His children. He does. Happy is the man who has the God of Jacob for his help whose hope is in the Lord his God." Psalm 146, 5 and 6.

Now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit." Now by the way there's like a church named Hope somewhere. Like that's the name of our church. How about that? Is that us? Hope hopes all things.

Hope hopes all things. You know, It's hard to find a place where there's not more hope, at least on the surface. Are you hopeful? Are you hopeful for the future? Please, you can be hopeful.

Please take his hope to be yours, to hope for the glory of God. He will glorify himself. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.

And then finally, love endures all things. This is somewhat like bears all things. It's very similar. It means to stay under. And it does have this meaning of bearing up under pressure and it assumes that there are things that you must endure.

There are things that are difficult that are going to be happening to you and you must keep on. You must keep on. Do not give up. Don't throw in the towel. Love doesn't throw in its hands.

Now, if you're tempted to give up, recognize what's happening to you. You're tempted to leave love. You say, I'm just so frustrated. You know, I can't take it anymore. Remember what you're saying.

You are being tempted to lose your love in the midst of a situation because love endures all things. Whatever injustice, water off a duck's back. Endure it. And so you have these three elements of applying 1 Corinthians 13, examine, personalize, and soak in the love of God. Now, each one of these marks of love that we've just surveyed over the last two weeks are disclosures of the greatness of the love of God that is in Jesus Christ, every single one of them.

And make sure that you understand that God has created you to be a living manifestation of the love of Jesus Christ. And there's really no way that you can be a living manifestation of the love of Jesus Christ unless you have repented of your sins and have been born again and the power of sin has been broken and you are becoming like Jesus Christ as a result of being filled with the Holy Spirit. That is the only way. The only way to achieve any of these marks of love is by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And remember this, if you're not a believer, whatever you do without love is nothing you are nothing and it profits you nothing nothing you do is meaningful or valuable without love nothing this is the great This is the great threat that hangs over the life of every unbeliever.

They are nothing and it will come to nothing. And so, 1 Corinthians 13 isn't just a sweet love chapter. It's designed to rescue people from darkness, to show them the love of God that is in Jesus Christ. Love suffers long. Love is patient.

You know, Christ was patient. Christ was slow to anger. Love is kind. The Lord Jesus Christ loved us and he made us alive when we were dead in our transgressions. We were his enemies and he made us alive while we were insolent toward him because love is kind.

Love does not envy when someone else prospers. Christ did not seek to do us wrong. Christ never sought to destroy the object of his love as the envious does. Love does not parade itself. Jesus Christ humbled himself and made himself a bond servant.

He washed Peter's feet. He used a borrowed boat in the Sea of Galilee. He used a borrowed donkey to enter Jerusalem. He used a borrowed tomb to be buried and he was poor yet making many rich. Love doesn't parade itself.

Jesus Christ humbled himself. Love is not puffed up. Jesus Christ comes to us and He is gentle and humble and hard and He will give you rest for your souls. Love does not behave rudely. Jesus Christ never treated anyone rudely.

Anyone who heard Him knew of the gracious words that fell from His lips. Love does not seek its own. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. Love is not provoked. Jesus Christ was silent when he was being wronged, and he does not punish us as our sins deserve, even though we provoke him every day.

Love thinks no evil. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs. Jesus Christ has put our sins as far as the east is from the west. Love does not rejoice in iniquity. Jesus Christ comes and He destroys the work of the devil.

He sends his spirit to convict us of his sins and to help us to escape our sins, to help us to quit rejoicing in iniquity. Love rejoices in the truth. Jesus Christ only gives us what is good. He only gives us His word which will rejoice the heart and convert our souls and make us pure. Love bears all things.

Nothing can snatch us out of His hands. He will hold you fast. He will bear up. He will bear you up. Love believes all things.

Christ has promised to finish what He began. He will finish His work. Love hopes all things. The Lord Jesus Christ is the source of all hope. Love endures all things.

Christ endured the cross, despising the shame for the joy that was set before him. He bore the punishment for our sins in his body. He endured all things. And I think going through this chapter and these manifestations of love, there really are only three responses that one can have. First, Lord, I'm lost.

Save my soul. Transplant my heart. Or second, Lord, forgive me for how I've treated my family or my friend or my church. Or Lord, how deep the Father's love for us, how vast, beyond all measure. Everything that God has done, everything he has created, everything he has written for his children is for the purpose of love, everything.

And when we get to the next section, we'll see exactly what that means when we speak of the permanency of love and the supremacy of love. But God sent his son into the world because he loved the world, so that love would be kept alive in the world, so that his children would glorify him by love. Now, this church has been tested and has been given opportunities to set aside love. And so let's remember what love really is. It's been spoken to us right here.

Let's go do that. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, pray that you would come and sanctify our church. I thank you for how you went to Corinth and Ephesus and Colossae with the very same message that you've come to Hope Baptist Church, to love like Jesus Christ has loved. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us strength.

I pray you would give us victory that our church would be a manifestation of your love. Amen.